Mass Effect 1 Redux

Over the holidays, and the past couple weeks since, as prep for the upcoming release of Mass Effect 2, I started up a fresh run through of Mass Effect 1 and managed to do something I’ve not done in a long, long time – finish a RPG a second time. I also went back and read my initial review of the PC version of the game. I was a bit too easy on it. (I gave it an A-.)

Now, don’t get me wrong as I stand by the text of the review. I still really like this game. The story arc and characterization are, for my money, about as good as it gets. In some ways I enjoyed this play-through even more because I went the Renegade route with my player character, which has some fun and chilling moments that I’m not used to seeing in these games, what with my penchant for playing a Big Damn Hero character. I did, however, let the game off too lightly in terms of what it didn’t do very well.

The side quests in the game (and there are many) are really a complete and utter joke, which really isn’t permissible when you consider just how short the main plotline for the game actually is. There’s the beginning of an effort that could have made these side quests fun, especially with regards to the ethically devoid Cerberus corporation. But nothing is really ever made of it, which makes these quests just a giant loose end waiting to be resolved. (Maybe in the sequel?)

I also love the idea of a Starflight-esque romp through the galaxy, roving around planets in an ATV and collecting resources and such. But the implementation isn’t just bad, it’s a complete and utter disaster. There are what? Three or four design templates at work for planet based structures and ship-boarding actions? It’s outright lazy. And, truly, don’t get me started on the mountainous terrain. I’ve read a lot of complaints about the ATV, but really, the ATV is fine (or at least adequate). It’s the constant zig-zag terrain that is, at times, completely un-navigable, that really kills the planet roving. There were times I was ready to heave my keyboard across the room.

It’s flaws as a shooter also stood out a bit more to me this time around. I still had fun with it, but your AI teammates constantly run in front of you when you’re shooting, shoot you in the back, and get stuck on edges of walls and objects. If it weren’t so easy to survive combats on standard difficulty it would be extremely frustrating.

Beyond those elements, however, I can’t say I had any complaints. Were I scoring it again I’d be looking at a B+, maybe a B if I’m feeling grumpy. It hasn’t, much to my relief, dimmed my expectations for Mass Effect 2 one little bit. If anything, the fact that there’s now so much for Bioware to build on with this IP has only raised my expectations. Frankly, I’m betting on an even better game than Dragon Age, and you people know how irrationally I loved that game. (Speaking of which, the Return to Ostagar DLC is finally coming out today. Something for my new rogue city elf to explore! Huzzah!)

Impressions: Guitar Hero: Van Halen

For the last week I’ve been playing Guitar Hero: Van Halen. I feel sad just having to write that. The only applicable analog to that sentence would be for me to write, “For the past week I’ve been continually banging my head on my desk.” They are, more or less, synonymous activities.

And I liked Van Halen.

First of all, this is the single worst-looking Guitar Hero game I’ve ever played. That includes the PS2-exclusive Guitar Hero 1. The use of color has not been a strong suit of the franchise since Neversoft took over its development (this game, btw, is actually developed by a company called Underground Development, using Neversoft’s game engine), and like every GH game since numero tres, this game looks muted and bland. The character models, though, are just flat out ugly. Not to mention creepy. This is a budget game with a regular game’s price.

Second, the audio is in stereo only. Someone is going to have to explain to me how a game, especially a music game, published in 2009 manages to not support Dolby Digital surround sound. This is probably my biggest single beef with the game because it’s apparent in every single song you play that that the audio is not as clear or encompassing as in any other comparable game.

Third, not one track from the Sammy Hagar era? Really? Hey, I know many people hate Sammy Hagar. I’m not one of them, but whatever. I acknowledge David Lee Roth is a superior talent, but then, so was Terrell Owens in his prime and, like Owens, Roth is an ass. Also, let’s take a quick look at the scoreboard since Hagar and Van Halen parted ways:

Albums from Hagar (includes the one from Chickenfoot): 7

Albums from Van Halen: 1 (almost 12 years ago)

Now tell me who’s about making music and who’s just looking to cash in with the least amount of effort possible.

Anyway, no matter how much you might feel Van Halen is only Van Halen with monkey Roth in the lead, the band still put out four frigg’n albums with Hagar as the lead man. Ignoring the one album done with Gary Cherone in the lead is justifiable, but can anyone really argue a Van Halen-themed Guitar Hero game is complete without at least a couple tracks from For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge? Nothing from 5150? Nothing from OU812? Nothing from Bala… okay, nevermind that last one. That is insanity. I can only hope it’s a contractual issue, because if it was a design decision, wow was it stupid.

Fourth, as is the case in every single one of these band-themed Guitar Hero games, the non-Van Halen tracks selected for inclusion along with the main band’s stuff almost universally makes no sense. Two words: Stacy’s Frigg’n Mom. How does that happen? How do Semi-Charmed Life and Pretty Fly (for a White Guy) happen? And can we finally retire White Wedding (as awesome as it is) and frigg’n Painkiller (as awesome as it’s not) from any future renditions of these music games? Including filler music in a band-themed game is a bad idea in principle, but in this game the practice reaches entirely new lows.

Fifth, even if you’re going to sell me on a Van Halen game with stereo sound, a game with absolutely no Hagar content, and one that includes tracks from Fountains of Wayne and Jimmy Eat World, you are, under no circumstances, selling me on a Van Halen game that features the band as it exists today. Geezer, over the hill, and without anything new or relevant to say versions of Eddie, Alex, and Roth with Eddie’s kid, Wolfgang*, on bass. The hell? Even in the lone section of the game to show the band in their prime, a six song set where three of the songs are Eddie-only solos, there he is, Wolfgang Van Halen, playing bass. Kid wasn’t even born yet. Erasing Hagar (and, I guess, Cherone) from the band’s history is bad enough, but not one trace of Michael frigg’n Anthony to boot?

Screw Eddie. Screw Alex. Screw Activision for even considering allowing something this inept and hobbled to be made in the first place. I can’t even muster the indignation to say anything bad about Underground’s development job. It’s obvious they had no budget and no freedom. There’s simply no way this is the game they wanted to make. This isn’t a game that anyone would want to make.

---

*Note: I’m not bagging on Wolfgang. For all I know the kid could be the best bassist of his generation. The point of my screed is that these band themed games should be a celebration of the history and times of the featured band, not something that pretends most of that history doesn’t exist. If you’re not gonna do that, then offer the tracks as DLC or something. Do not, under any circumstances, make a full-on game. Harmonix understood that when they made Beatles Rock Band.

Top 5 of 2009 - #1 Dragon Age

Yeah, not a lot of mystery to that. Somewhere I still have an issue of Games for Windows Magazine (the first issue where it changed to that name instead of the old Computer Gaming World - RIP) that had Dragon Age on the cover:

That was over three years ago. I’ve been looking forward to Bioware’s return to fantasy ever since and Dragon Age, amazingly, did not disappoint. It's every single bit the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate that I wanted it to be. True, the narrative does occasionally get clumsy and yes, the world is far too restrictive (especially if you're a lover of open world RPGs like Fallout 3), but that doesn't stop this game from being an all time favorite.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or have zero interest in such things), you know Bioware has already announced the first full-on expansion for Dragon Age to be released in March: Awakening. Here’s the trailer:

Video Games | Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening | Expansion Debut Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Sold.

Most Wanted Games of 2010

According to my staff at GameShark. Sans Todd because he's way too good to take part in such things.

Actually most of us picked the same 3-4 games anyway...

Top 5 of 2009 - #2 Beatles Rock Band

I’ve spent about two hours or so this week playing Guitar Hero: Van Halen. Why? Because I’m an idiot who will play a game with zero production value for a pretty lousy review check. More on why that particular game sucks later. (It is awful. And I like(d) Van Halen.) The reason I bring it up here is that it’s such a perfect contrast as to what makes Beatles Rock Band such an incredibly wonderful game. 

A year ago I wasn’t even a Beatles fan. I didn’t dislike the Beatles. I just never bothered to give their music the time of day. Even when I picked up a copy of Abbey Road over the summer I never quite got it. It wasn’t until Beatles Rock Band came out that I really started to hear their music for the first time and from that moment forward I’ve been hooked and, really, that’s the genius of a franchise like Rock Band.

It’s not just about air guitar-esque wish fulfillment, although the way the game makes you feel like you can play to tens of thousands of screaming fans will always be cool. It’s that it allows you to appreciate music on a different level. True, all those colored bars and plastic frets don’t do a damn thing to help you learn music, but damn if they don’t affect how you hear it and your understanding of how a song is put together. It’s an incredible experience and the way the visuals of the band tie it all together by letting you see how the Beatles evolved over their all-too-brief career not only makes this game shine in its own right but it also directs a big middle finger at Activision for their inability to do anything remotely as cool as this with their pedestrian (at best) band-themed Guitar Hero games.

Boardgame Awards

Michael's 2009 awards are up today. I have played some of those this year -- Chaos in the Old World is a worthy game, no doubt. And Space Hulk is gold.

As usual I will post my 2009 Boardgames to Play with Your Kid(s) shortly, awaiting approval from Ashley.

Bill's Top 5 for 2009

Left 4 Dead I and II
Red Faction Guerrilla
Batman Arkham Asylum
Dragon Age (on the PC)
Beatles Rock Band

Done and done.

Todd's Thunder Stolen: Complete.

Top 5 of 2009 - #3 Left 4 Dead

When jotting down my list I originally wrote this as Left 4 Dead 1 simply because that’s the one I spent, quite literally, the entire year playing. It occurs to me, however, that both Left 4 Dead and its sequel are pretty much the same game, so why not lump them together? This is a conclusion a third grader –admittedly, one with negligent parents- comes to faster than I have, but whatever.

If you go purely by play time, it’s possible this game should be at the top of the list. Played, on average, about once a week for about three hours at a time. Let’s see… that’s 52 x 3. Is it sad my first instinct was to load up Windows Calculator to figure out that bit of math? Probably. Regardless, that’s in the ballpark of 156 hours of 2009 spent slaying the zombie hoard and I don’t consider any of it wasted time because it was all spent playing the game co-op with friends. Time spent in shared activity with friends is never wasted.

All together now…

Awwwwwwww.

Right. Anyway. The whole notion of zombies may fast be becoming an overused method of letting you commit mass murder without the guilt, but good is good and dammit, there is no better zombie survival series than Left 4 Dead. The eight player versus mode is more fun than anyone has a right to and even though I have my reservations about the setting, characters, and gameplay balance of the sequel, it’s not like I’m going back to play the first one anytime soon. This is a series with legs (often dismembered) and I look forward to another year of semi-weekly zombie genocide.

Speaking of which, Bill, it’s been like 504 hours since I last put a bullet in a zombie’s brainpan. That needs to be remedied.

Top 5 of 2009 - #4 Knights of the Old Republic

What? Just because it took six years for me to finally play and finish this game makes it no less chock full of awesome. Anyway, if you’ve been reading the blog for any length of time you know Bioware pretty much always has me at hello when they release an RPG and KOTOR was no exception. The fact that I was able to get it off of Steam last October for a mere $10? That’s just gravy because this game is nigh impossible to find at retail anymore, even on the PC.

I’ve written it before, but seriously, how is it that Bioware gets Star Wars so much more than its own creator. I know Lucas has become the icon for a creator run amok, but I mean really, how? How can a bunch of guys up in Edmonton come up with the story in this game while Lucas, and all the resources his name entails, comes up with Attack of the Clones?

Bah.

Anyway, at its heart KOTOR is a story about redemption, which is really the theme at the heart of all of Star Wars. The fact that it takes place a few thousand years before the films frees it from a lot of baggage, but credit where it’s do because I’m pretty sure I caught more than one reference to events and characters from the old Dark Horse comic series-es(?) –just how does one pluralize that word to mean multiple series?- Tales of the Jedi, which was itself some great stuff (if memory serves; it’s been awhile).

The fact that the game is six years old does mean the game comes with baggage. It’s clearly designed with the original Xbox in mind, and all the graphical –uh- wonderfulness that entails, but it does play just fine on the PC and on modern operating systems. (I was on Vista at the time.) The storytelling is, at times, trite, but if you’ve a sentimental bone in your body it’ll hook you when it has to.

The RPG ruleset is based on D&D 3.0 so there’s plenty of number crunching going on in the background for the pen & paper nerds (of which I am one – a little). The force powers –the ones I tried- all work in the context of the gameplay and dammit, it’s just so frigg’n cool to dual wield a pair of lightsabers. If you’re an RPG player who let this one pass by, do yourself a favor and pick it up off of Steam. Yeah, it’s dated, but it’s still pretty damn great.

Top 5 of 2009 - #5 NHL ‘10

Yeah, I know. Yet another in an endless series of end of year “best of” posts. You’ll just have to deal with it because I’ve pledged to myself to blog more this year and that means writing on topics I’d normally pass over because they’re boring as shit. ;) 

Anyway, my top 5 list is unique (but not really) because it’s the top 5 games I've actually played in 2009, which doesn’t necessarily mean games that were released in 2009. You see what’s going on? I can claim not to be cliché because I’ve added a twist!

If only twists weren’t so cliché.

Ahem.

So here we go with #5. The rest should follow on a daily basis. (Yes, I’m using this as an excuse to fill up five day’s worth of posting. Just because I’m pledging to blog more doesn’t mean I won’t find new ways to be lazy about it)

#5 NHL ‘10

In 2006, following years of incompetent neglect, the NHL series really started to improve. NHL 2007 wasn’t all that, but if memory serves, it was the first to start using the right analog stick for shooting, which was revolutionary in terms of hockey games, and it did add some other nice improvements to the gameplay. Like the 2009 iteration of the Detroit Lions, there was really nowhere to go but up and NHL 2007 did just that. NHL 2008, which I reviewed, was a considerable improvement over the previous edition. I skipped 2009, but I dug back in with ‘10 and there’s just no way to conclude that in term of on-ice gameplay it’s anything but the single best NHL video game ever done.

I think one of the hardest things to reflect in sports games is the variable nature of the games they depict. Good teams need to win more than they lose, but the results of most games played should always be in doubt, and that’s not even factoring in the hugely variable skill of the individual player. NHL ‘10 dances on that line as well as any sports game I’ve played, both in terms of letting the user find a difficulty and style of gameplay that fits them and in making sure every game feels unique. I love it. The only real downside, and it is significant, is that the franchise mode is just awful, but I’ll take what I can get from a console sports game.

I was enjoying NHL ‘10 so much during the fall that I attempted something I’ve not accomplished with a sports game since Bases Loaded on the NES when I was a kid (football games excepted), which is to manually play out a single full season. Yes, that project was doomed to failure and lasted just over a month, but I blame Dragon Age. In fact everything in my life that didn’t get done last November –vacuuming, laundry, feeding my kids something other than PEZ- is pretty much Dragon Age’s fault. Nonetheless, I was having a shitload of fun with NHL and will probably go back to it as the winter doldrums officially set in.

GameShark 2009 Year End Awards

I posted these on Monday but with friends and family at the house this week, I forgot to mention it here. Enjoy.

I actually have some features in the oven that should be posted after New Year. Our 2010 Most Wanted, The 50 Games That Shaped the Decade, and the Best Games You Didn't Play in 2009.

And of course Ashley's Top 10, always a crowd favorite.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.

Happy Holidays!

First order of business. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and all that associated stuff to all of you.

I'm heading out of dodge for much of the next week and won't be posting much (if at all). This doesn't make things around here much different than they already have been for the last month (and year, really). I know. I suck. I've not been a great blogger this year. Too many distractions, too much procrastination, etc. etc. So, primary (only?) New Year's resolution is to get back on the stick with the whole blogging thing. Time will tell, of course.

In the meantime I hope you all have (had) a wonderful (and safe) holiday season!

Saturday Basketball -- 3rd grade Girl Style

Today is game #2 in Ashley's league. They play at 3:45 today and I will get a post game report up, likely tomorrow.

I smell a 10 point 5 assist 5 steal day today!

No pressure Ash!

Madden Ultimate Team Preview

I didn't preview this one for GameShark, but Jason did a good write up on it.

Madden Patch #2

Bill Harris is doing his due diligence over at DB.

King's Bounty and Basketball

First off my take on the King's Bounty sequel was posted Friday. Fun game.

Ashley's first basketball game was Saturday and her team lost 22-7.

At this age all it takes is one girl who is taller than everyone else, can actually get the ball TO the rim, and get all of the rebounds to turn a game into a route. Basically the other team had a 10 year old version of Kareem. And when half the girls still don't know what defense really means...that's a recipe for...well for 22-7.

Ashley is the point guard and she had a blast. She did get an assist and she played really good defense and I have never seen her so INTO a game before. Soccer is different for her. I get the feeling she actually enjoys basketball whereas soccer is just something to do with her friends.

Mary and I are doing a good job, we think, of not being "those parents." You know the parents who tell the coach what to do, yell at the kids from the bleachers and generally act like a 3rd grade girl's basketball game is Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

If you do not have kids let me assure you: these people exist and they must be weeded out of the gene pool for the sake of our survival.

But Mary and I both have basketball backgrounds so when we are watching practice and the coach is telling the kids to set a screen by basically acting like they are boxing out with their arms extended, which in every form of basketball is highly illegal, it's hard to bite my tongue. But I do. When I coached soccer I KNOW I was likely messing stuff up and I would have felt like crap if Mr. Soccer Star came up to me and told me I was doing stuff horribly wrong. But damn...teaching illegal screens?

So we both just sit there and clap and encourage the kids as best we can because regardless -- Ashley is loving it and Mary already informed me after the first practice that we were both coaching next year.

Knowing Mary, I bet she'll have them running suicides.

Madden Ultimate Team

Well, I really do have a lot of things to talk about as I haven't blogged anything substantial for a while.

But for now, I'll say that EA sent me a build of Madden Ultimate Team for the 360 -- and the embargo is in place until Dec. 14th and the press sheet even says "no first hand impressions."

So, there you go.

Last weekend we made the yearly trek to Indy to see Todd. Baroo showed up as well and we basically spent 48 hours playing boardgames -- Small World, Chaos in the Old World, Rails of Europe and a brilliant 6 player game of Battlestar Galactica.

You think you're a middle aged hobby nerd? Try spending an hour pleading with your wife that you are not, in fact, a Cylon. That hits home let me tell ya.

I continue to hang my hat on the fact that my jump shot is as smooth as spun silk. When that leaves..I'm in trouble.

Ashley is playing on her 3rd/4th grade youth league basketball team -- they have her at point guard, which she is totally loving - she gets to call the plays and bring the ball up the court. She's very much like her mom.

Mary played HS basketball on a very, very good Division IV team. Mary was going to be a walk on at Marietta college in Ohio until she blew out her knee. She could play.

Check that -- she could play DEFENSE. Mary was that annoying defender who stuck to you like glue, and got her points on steals and transition baskets.

Me? I have the speed of a chain smoking turtle and the defensive ability of an anvil.

But I can come off a screen and shoot three pointers. With my ankles being what they are today, the days of penetrating are all but over -- but leave me open and I'll show you that while this white man cannot jump (at all) he can shoot.

Ashley resembles Mary. Quick, plays defense, steals a lot of balls and can't shoot a lick. Sort of the ideal 3rd grade point guard! She's having a blast and I can't wait for her first game -- this Saturday!

Picard Will Put On Zeppelin and Eat Cheddar Cheese

This Star Trek TNG – uh – video thing, has been making the rounds today, so chances are you’ve seen it already, but if not it’s worth taking three minutes to watch. It may just be up there with The Vader Sessions. (Not Work Safe – Language)

Left 4 Dead 2 Impressions (360 version)

Note: I’ve read that the PC version of this game plays much differently than the 360 version in terms of difficulty and balance, so keep that in mind as you read.

I picked up L4D2 during release week, but because I’ve been out of town for a week I’ve only had a couple of chances to play. Bill, crew, and I have done a couple of Campaign runs, one on the carnival scenario and one on Dead Center as well as a handful of Versus runs. My overall impression?

This game is frigg’n hard.

I can’t decide, though, if I think it’s *too* hard. My gut is that it is. Our primary four-man crew has been playing the first game since around January. We are not particularly skilled, but we’ve at least finished all the L4D1 scenarios on Advanced difficulty so we’re hardly rookies. In L4D2, however, we’ve had real trouble just reaching the the finale on Normal, let alone surviving it. Mobs everywhere. Specials, bunches of them, coming out of the woodwork at almost any moment. I’ve found that by the time the clock passes midnight the game has started to feel more monotonous than fun. I am enjoying it, but in that same way that Taco Bell tastes really good until you hit your fifth or sixth taco and then you want to curse the chain’s very existence.

It seems like the difficulty levels now only affect how much damage you do and take and not the number of zombies in need of a good shooting. It makes for a much more demanding game that changes how you need to play it and I haven’t learned how to be effective playing with the “new shit” as it were. It’s definitely set up so that it’s nigh impossible to find cover when the horde arrives. You can try, but the new specials like the Spitter and Charger pretty much guarantee that if you don’t get your feet moving you’re going to get torn up. Players that can shoot and move well at the same time are likely to do okay. My problem is that I’m a player who likes to catch his breath. Left 4 Dead kept you moving, sure, but if you wanted to hole up in a modestly secure area for a couple of minutes you could get away with it. L4D2 not so much and I’m not sure I like that.

This is just as true, IMO, in Versus mode in which you’ve got equal number of players playing as infected and survivors. I’m okay with the infected having an advantage in this game. That is as it should be. At the same time, I’ve been a part of four Versus mode matches and have yet to see the survivors make it to a safe room; and you can just forget about anyone coming even remotely close to surviving the finale. Somewhere there’s a line between challenging and punitive and I’m not sure L4D2 is on the right side of it.

As I noted above, it does not mean I don’t like the game. There’s still a lot to love about it. I love the new weapons. I like all the settings I’ve played through so far. The carnival scenario was just a wild, wild ride. And as much as they’re a pain in the ass, the new special infected do make the game more interesting. Seriously, the first time you Jockey a survivor into a horde of undead or bowl over a tight group of survivors as the the Charger… well, it’s pretty awesome. And who knows? Maybe as I get used to/better at playing the way the game demands I’ll change my tune on the difficulty.

I’m less sure I’ll change my tune on the new survivors, however. There’s nothing eminently wrong with them, but I like the original crew better. Ellis, in particular, needs to be shot in the head. He’s funny the first few times he goes on and on about some dumb thing, while in a safe room, but unlike the Bill character from L4D1, Ellis’s shtick gets old. Bill’s “I hate xxx” (trains, farms, stairs, etc.) every 30 minutes is beautiful in its simplicity. Ellis’s constant, long-winded rambling? Pass.

Turkey Day in Rhode Island

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I was happy to get out of dodge for a week by spending it with my mom’s side of the family in Middletown, Rhode Island (very near Newport), which is quite possibly my favorite place on planet Earth and also the first time I’ve been out there in over six years. I also got to bring Kyle with me, which as an added bonus. (Who knew a four year old could be so incredibly well behaved while being stuck in a car for 16 hours over two days?)

Despite the fact that the sun didn’t come out once during the week that I was there and on most days it was constantly raining it was a hella good time getting to see my grandparents and the aunts, uncles, and cousins that I’ve not seen for so long. I’m actually the oldest of my grandparents’ eight grandchildren and of those living in the continental US (six of us), I’m the oldest by a good 20 years. Given that the last time I saw most of them, they were toddlers and early elementary aged kids, it was quite a shock to the eye to see how much they’ve grown up and there’s definitely a sense that in being away for so long that I’ve missed out on a lot of memorable times. It made coming home last weekend, not knowing when I’ll next get the chance to go back, a difficult thing to do.

It’s also weird to be the only grandchild at the Thanksgiving Day dinner table throwing back glasses of wine like like I’m Paul Giamatti in the movie Sideways. Fortunately, such behavior didn’t separate me much from any of the other parents at the table. I really don’t want to know how many bottles of wine and champagne were consumed on that day, but I’m sure it was not a small number.

In the evening we all sat down to watch the movie Christmas Vacation, which is the first time any of the kids had seen this wonderful flick. Watching them all gathered round and just dying of laughter in some of the scenes was as perfect a moment as one can have. Makes me wish I could just move out there, but reality is reality, and such a move isn’t really an option anymore. Ah well.

Anyway, over the course of the next week or two I plan to write a bit more about Dragon Age. I’m starting a second playthrough this week, this time running with the mage origin, so that should be interesting. I don’t recall the last time I finished a game this long and restarted immediately after it was over. (I did attempt that with Fallout 3, but the attempt may have lasted about six hours.) I’ve also been able to put some time into Left 4 Dead 2 (360 version), so I’ll need to write up some thoughts on that as well.